Gold Acre Farm: how one family left city burnout to start the citrus farm of their dreams
Alarie and her husband Ryan started a regenerative farm in Riverside, CA that’s reshaping how food is grown, sold, and shared. It all started as a need to escape LA burnout and live a more grounded life.
Not your grocery store citrus
If you’ve only ever bought citrus from a grocery store, Gold Acre Farm might surprise you.
Their oranges aren’t perfectly smooth. Some are greenish. Others are bumpy, uneven, or “ugly” by retail standards. But that’s the point.
“When you get a grocery store fruit, you're getting something that's been sized and waxed and a lot of times they'll take them into a room and they'll pump the room with ethylene gas which is a natural gas but it's a de-greening agent.
And these you might get a green orange. It doesn't mean it's not ripe. It means that it's just a different orange.”
At Gold Acre, variation isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. The farm specializes in Gold Nugget mandarins, a variety developed by UC Riverside specifically for flavor and local growing conditions. They’re sweeter, juicier, and more complex than the standardized citrus most people are used to.
That creates an opportunity to sell directly to customers who care more about taste, freshness, and transparency than uniformity.
From the “rat race” to a family-run farm
Gold Acre Farm didn’t start as a business plan. It started as a lifestyle shift.
After years in Los Angeles, Alarie and her husband found themselves burnt out.
“We were in the rat race and it was exhausting… we have four kids and it was just work all the time.”
So they took a leap. They moved to Riverside, bought land that was trash-covered, and planted 150 Gold Nugget Mandarin trees.
“We have pictures of our little 2-year-old setting his first tree in the ground… they’ve grown up from there.”
The goal wasn’t just to grow fruit. It was to create a different kind of life. That intention comes through most clearly in Alarie’s own words:
“I am from Colorado. I studied teaching, Spanish teaching actually in college and I did that. I worked at the consulate of Spain. I just enjoy people is what it really is. And my husband is a gardener, like he has farming in his blood and this was always a dream of his. I'm a super good cheerleader, so I was like, ‘Yeah, let's do this. I'll help you.’
And so a lot of the people side of it and the picking and the selling has fallen on me. And the reason we chose to do this really was for our kids. We wanted them to get involved in using their hands and working hard and doing things that were uncomfortable and had a lot of delayed gratification.
Honestly, our kids are not screen kids, they are farm kids. We've chosen this life to help them learn and grow in a different way… my full-time job is a mother of four children and I get to take care of them and bring them up in this awesome place.”
Growing for flavor, not shelf life
Unlike industrial agriculture, Gold Acre Farm is optimized for quality, not logistics.
Their mandarins are:
Grown using organic, regenerative practices
Picked at peak ripeness, not early for transport
Never waxed or chemically treated
Hand-selected one by one
“Every single one has to be picked by hand… if it’s not good, I’m not going to send it to you.”
Alarie explained the nuggets are carefully twisted or clipped by hand - never yanked or pulled - to void tearing the peel.
Even the imperfect fruit doesn’t go to waste. “Uglier” mandarins are sent to a local juicer, creating a small ecosystem of complementary food businesses.
This approach naturally limits scale, but it increases product quality and customer trust.
The early days: CSAs, word of mouth, and DMs
Like many small farms, Gold Acre started informally.
They shared fruit with friends, joined local CSA boxes, and built an audience through social media.
“We started just giving them away… building that feeling of like we’ve got something great coming and we want you to be part of it.”
As demand grew, so did the complexity.
Orders came in through text messages, Instagram DMs, emails, and Google Docs.
“It was everywhere and it was so frustrating.”
Selling farm produce online without the chaos
Eventually, they needed a more structured way to sell, especially as the grove started producing more and more. Their goals were simple:
Sell both local pickup and shipped orders
Avoid chasing payments
Plan harvests more efficiently
Keep operations manageable
That’s when they moved over to Hotplate.
“It just brought everything in together… I didn’t have to think about collecting money or chasing people down.”
Instead of managing scattered orders, they now run drops for pre-order pickup. These are scheduled sales windows that consolidate demand into predictable pickup or shipping days.
This shift gave them something more valuable than efficiency. It gave them time.
“I can be out here… taking care of the food and the growing and the picking and the people.”
If you’re curious about Hotplate, you can create an account for free here.
From daily chaos to a weekly rhythm
Before structuring their sales, the farm operated reactively.
“Friends would text me throughout the week… ‘Can I pick up? Can you meet me here?’”
Now, everything runs on a cadence:
Weekly or near-weekly drops
Designated pickup days
Planned harvest quantities based on orders
This matters especially for perishable products.
“Food does not last… I don’t want this to sit on the shelf forever because it’s real.”
By aligning sales with harvest, they reduce waste, improve freshness, and simplify operations.
Shipping citrus nationwide, fresh from the tree
One of Gold Acre’s biggest unlocks has been direct-to-consumer shipping.
Fruit is picked, packed, and shipped within a tight window.
“Within 72 hours, this is on your doorstep and you get to try it.”
For customers outside California, especially those who have never had truly fresh citrus, this creates a completely different experience. It also expands the farm’s reach without relying on wholesale or retail.
Seasonality as a feature, not a constraint
Gold Acre’s citrus season runs from February into early summer, later than most grocery store citrus. They don’t rush the process.
“The fruit holds until June or July… and it just gets sweeter as the season goes on.”
Instead of fighting seasonality, they lean into it. Customers learn to anticipate it, and the product improves over time.
What other small farms can learn
Gold Acre Farm isn’t trying to become a massive operation and that’s intentional.
“This is the size of our farm and it’s going to stay this way.”
But their approach offers a clear playbook:
Sell direct when your product is differentiated
If your product isn’t typically found in the grocery store and/or is better in quality, direct-to-consumer can be the way to go.
Build demand before you scale supply
Starting with friends, CSAs, and social media helps validate demand early and spread word-of-mouth.
Consolidate orders early
Managing orders across DMs and spreadsheets works temporarily, but quickly becomes unsustainable.
Align sales with production
Structured drops help match harvest volume to demand, reducing waste and stress.
Design the business around your life
For Gold Acre, the goal wasn’t just revenue. It was time, family, and a specific way of living.
The future of Gold Acre Farm
As their trees mature, yields will continue to increase, but they’re not looking to expand beyond what the grove naturally provides each season.
“Really, this is the size of our farm and it’s gonna stay this way. We will, year after year we’ll have a bigger yield… and we’ll need to move this fruit to you.”
They do grow a handful of other varieties in their garden - lilikoi, peach, mango, and fig - which they sell locally. But gold nuggets remain the clear focus.
A small farm. A focused product. A direct relationship with customers.
And a business that supports the life Alarie and Ryan want for their family.
